Can we believe in “Mosaic Authorship”?

In our Mangano commentary, a very conservative commentary, Randall Bailey suggests a 3rd alternative to the authorship of Genesis. The first two options presented are:

1. Moses wrote it.

2. Moses did not write it.

He proposes a third option:

3. The book is one of “Mosaic Authorship”.

This solution provides that the work of Genesis is inspired by and preserved by God, but that Moses could have used other sources to write Genesis, and that editors/compilers of a “Mosaic” school may have completed some of the books of the Pentateuch.

Bailey says on page 101, “…Authorship, sources, and inspiration are separate issues. Moses may have used sources to write the Pentateuch and other authors may have added to the Pentateuch. Similarly, one may believe in the inspiration of the original autographs and acknowledge the evidence that points to additions to Moses’ work…”.

As I read this I breathed a sigh of relief. Can I really choose option 3? It sounds good, but does it really hold up in the wash? Can I have my cake (The Bible is the inspired word of God.) and eat it too (Yes, it really is a little weird for Moses to report on his own death.)?

Maybe I have been to quick to give myself the same answer that I give my children when they ask me things like,

“Mommy, if a baby is in its mommy’s tummy when Jesus comes back, will it stay in her tummy in heaven?”, or

“Mommy, if Jesus is God, and Jesus was dead when he came off the cross, was God dead for that day?”, or

“Mommy, where EXACTLY is heaven?”.

I always tell them, “Hmmm, great question. Let’s remember to ask God that one when we get there!” (Does this qualify as teaching your children Torah when you rise up, lie down, and walk along the path?)

Maybe I shouldn’t be scared to think about these seemingly scary issues of authorship? Maybe there are other answers out there or maybe it would be okay to really look and still not have them answered?

Is anyone else struggling with this? Has anyone else resolved it for themselves? I would love your insight.

Cathy

Greetings from a latecomer

Hello, folks. After some extraordinary confusion, I’ve finally managed to join the site.

My name is Tyler Martin. I am a 23-year-old 2010 graduate from KCU, and this makes my second class in the grad school program (Christian Leadership, emphasis in theological studies). My goal is to eventually teach theology on the college level, and I look forward to diving a bit deeper into Old Testament research and gaining a better understanding of the Christian tradition (and, more broadly, the work of God) as a result. For me, life is very much a constant learning experience, and it is my belief that intellectual growth quite often goes hand in hand with spiritual growth, and neither of those truly ends as long as one lives. Having taken this view, I find it hard to stay in one place, figuratively speaking–while the foundations of my views and beliefs have remained largely the same in the years since my life as a Christian began in earnest, the learning I have attained has always led me to see things in a much broader and brighter light.

As far as my personal life is concerned, I very much meet the qualifications for “nerd.” I love to read, both fiction and non-fiction, though lately I’ve seen more of the latter. My favorite authors include Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, and Dr. Seuss. I’ve been a huge fan of Godzilla and his monstrous kin since childhood, and am also rather fond of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the like. The username I’ve chosen is a reference both to my “wandering” nature and to an excellent 1949 film by the great Akira Kurosawa. Music is also of great interest to me–I spent my first three and a half years at KCU majoring in Vocal Performance, and while my career plans may have changed, I see that experience as entirely worthwhile and wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I’m still getting used to the whole grad school thing, but I’m ready for just about anything. Looking forward to some excellent discussion.

Hebrew Language: A pair of glasses to understand how people view the world.

I have read many posts and comments where students tell the others that they struggle learning the languages, not only English, but Spanish, German or French. But at the same time everybody agrees that learning Hebrew is very helpful to understand the Bible. I agree 100 percent with it and want to add that language reflects the way people think.  I remember I had a class “Cultural Communications for Translators” and we had an assignment where we were given Japanese hieroglyphs (nobody knew Japanese, of course) and their meanings and then combinations of these hieroglyphs, the meanings of which we knew, and tried to guess the words – some of them we guessed but most of them we didn’t. But in the end the instructor explained why this particular combination of hieroglyphs meant that word and how, knew we the culture, we might have guessed the meaning. Language very much reflects the culture. Another example is German. From my experience learning German, it is like Mathematics. All sentences are formulas (strict order of words in a sentence). Put the right words in the formula and you get the sentence. Now what can we say about the people who speak this Mathematical language? That they are very much logical, disciplined, organized, direct, probably the best workers.   Well, these are the stereotypes we have about them, and from what I heard from people who had a chance observing them, they are what we think they are. My expectations from learning Hebrew (I am going to study it for two semesters) is not only to be able to understand and read the Scriptures in the original, but maybe to have a better understanding of their worldview, the way they saw things. Language is the lenses through which people express what they see (analogy with worldview being a lens through which we see the world around us).

I might be at an advantage over other students in the class because a have experience of learning languages, both “alive” and dead. Plus some of the letters in Russian alphabet are borrowed from Hebrew, so I can make analogies. Nevertheless, it is always a challenge to master a language. All languages I learned are from one group of languages – Germanic, and one family of languages Indo-European (Russian also belongs to this family). But Hebrew is from another family of languages – Afro-Asiatic and Semitic group. The far away your own language, mother tongue, the more difficult is to learn the language. So here I am in the same position as everybody else.

I am looking forward to meeting everybody tomorrow.

Humbled

If I had my webcam on right now, you might see that I have the proverbial “deer in the headlights” look. I’m overwhelmed. I’m a bit nervous. I’m excited. I’m tired. I’m humbled.

Like many Nebraskans, I like football. But, I’m a casual football fan. (Nebraska Cornhuskers & Kansas City Chiefs – and I have a feeling this fall, I will add the KCU Knights to that list) I enjoy watching the games, but don’t get crazy about them like some people do. If the team I like loses a game, I realize the sun is still going to come up tomorrow – and if it doesn’t, we have way bigger problems than that a team lost a football game. As I ponder the upcoming season, I think about the undrafted rookies in NFL training camps across the country. I’m quite certain that many of them have the deer in the headlights look, too. I’m confident that many of them are having some humbling experiences. They’re excited as can be, but they’re not sure just exactly what they’ve gotten themselves into. However . . . if they’re smart, they know they can learn a great deal from veteran players.

In a small way, I empathize with them. As I’ve spent the past few weeks working on this class, I have: a) been excited b) wondered what I’ve gotten myself into c) been humbled. Just reading the depth of some of the posts on the blog creates all of the above. However, I’m going to choose to focus on c and a. I am humbled, but I am excited about what I can learn from this class, Dr. Alterman, and the “veteran players”.

Excited to meet you all on Monday! Until then, I remain . . . humbled.

The Jones

My name is Ian Jones, and I often use a definite article in my name because, really, why not?  My username is based out of Revelation 2:17 and, yes, it is Hebrew.  I’m interested to know what any Hebrew scholars in this class will make of it.  I have gone by many names because I love names.  I love to know what they mean, what they come from, how they developed.  I have already very carefully chosen names for my yet-unconceived children.  Names are probably the main reason why I love learning languages.  That, and I consider myself a philologist.

I was conceived on a mission in Zambia, so my parents and older sister came back to America and I was born in Indiana.  I spent the better part of my childhood in the country outside of Paint Lick, KY.  I can’t say for sure that it was the larger part, but it was definitely better.  I moved to Bourbonnais, IL for a few years and then to Clifton during my teenage years.  I then came back to Kentucky for college, and I hope I can stay here for a long time.

My favorite authors are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Ted Dekker.  I prefer novels by Christian authors over commentaries.  I’m working on a novel right now, along the vein of my favorite authors.  My musical tastes range from Josh Turner to Demon Hunter.  I play guitar, but if I had to choose, I would rather sing (but doing both at once is really fun!)  I like all kinds of movies, and play a very limited range of video games.

Currently, I live in Grayson with my wife Katherine (also in this class), and our home is always a comfortable, spacious mess.  We were just married at the beginning of this summer.  I work in the kitchen at Callihan’s Pub and Grill, and she works at the Child Development Center.  We’re waiting a while before we have kids.

I have two kilts, one traditional and one modern, and I am hoping to get a few more, eventually in my family tartan.  Recently, I have become obsessed with walking and working out (I wager I could leg-press almost 1,000 lbs).  I would like to start running again.

Thought on Enns

I have really enjoyed reading this book so far. It was been very insightful and thought provoking. I loved the section where he dealt with incarnation stories of the bible.  Christ is the most important incarnation story of the bible! Enns hit a home run for me when he talked about the magnitude of Christ in the biblical story. “He is the one in whom Israel’s story reaches its climax… Christ is the final destiny of Israel’s story, and it is to him that the Bible as a whole bears witness,” (110). The title of the book resonated in my mind as I finished reading the chapter. God’s holy word, the scriptures, is built on a foundation of divine inspiration. God’s Word, Jesus Christ, is the ultimate incarnation story of all time. His story, some people refer to as history, is full of God interacting with his people. The beauty of His story is revealed when every part of history collides with the cross.

On Lesson 4

While reading the historical introduction to Gilgamesh, I was interested to learn that writing was ultimately created due to the need for canals. We are taught in school that writing (sometimes we hear cuneiform) was first used in certain ancient cities, but I’m not sure I ever understood why a written language was needed, or why it was used in some ancient cultures but not others. Learning a little more about the historical aspects surrounding the Gilgamesh story, gives me an even greater appreciation for these ancient cultures and their significance when compared to biblical culture. Likewise, I found the section on the Akkadian cuneiform to be fascinating. Learning Hebrew doesn’t seem so bad, when compared with the idiosyncrasies of the Akkadian language.

 

When it comes to the flood, I think a comparison can be made between Gilgamesh and the Bible. As stated here, perhaps the reason the Gilgamesh flood was not worldwide was because the people in that place had no knowledge of the rest of the world. I think it is also important to note that while the descriptions of specific events may differ greatly between Gilgamesh and the Bile, the themes are very similar between the two. Aren’t themes more important anyway? Aren’t themes what allow us to say biblical truth exists in literature, movies, other art forms, and in the lives of others? Just a thought…

On Inspiration and Incarnation

I’m going to go ahead and comment on Enns’ book, even though I’ll probably end up using some of what I put here in my review. I enjoyed reading it, but like some of you, it took me longer to get through the book than I anticipated, and I’m sure I will reread many of its parts while writing my review.

 

First of all, I applaud the author’s willingness to address issues that many others would prefer to avoid, and while others may disagree with me, I feel that he does so with a relatively open mind. Like Enns, I agree that “God honors our honest questions,” and in an attempt to create constructive conversation, Enns questions nearly every idea we as Christians grew up with.

 

On page 13, Enns writes, “these are the “primary readers I envision for this book, those who desire to maintain a vibrant and reverent doctrine of Scripture, but who find it difficult to do so because they find familiar and conventional approaches to newer problems to be unhelpful.” In many ways I am one of these people, and so I appreciated a lot of what Enns had to say. I especially appreciated his explanation of the Bible as the word of God, compared to Christ as the Word. Enns writes, “as Christians we must remember that we believe not only that the Bible is the word of God, but that Christ himself is the word….the Bible is God’s word in written form; Christ is God’s word in human form” (110). While I have known each of these statements to be true, I don’t know if I had ever linked the two before.

 

Anyways, I thought I would point out some of the things I liked about the book. These are my thoughts thus far, what are yours?

Reflection on Lesson 4

The section in Lesson 4 titled “Authorship Issues” really has me thinking.  In Mark 7:10, Jesus says, “For Moses said,…’”  He was referencing to scriptures in the OT, and those scriptures are Exodus 20:12, Deut. 5:16, Exodus 21:17, and Lev. 20:9.  When I first read the three questions I was a little puzzled.  After all, Jesus does say Moses said these things, but we can’t be 100% sure who wrote the Torah, and if you take the same stance as Peter Enns, you might believe that maybe when Mark was writing this Gospel he got it wrong or somehow something was lost in translation and Jesus never really meant that Moses himself said these things.

But then I thought about it more and realized Moses did say these things!  It doesn’t matter so much WHO wrote it, but that Moses DID say the things that Jesus told the people he said.  Jesus never says “Moses wrote these things.”  He reminds us of things that Moses said because God was speaking through Him. 

I believe that it is very possible that Jesus was teaching that Moses is the author of the Torah.  He obviously didn’t feel that it was crucially important for us to know for a fact that Moses wrote it, or He would have said, and it would have been recorded, that Moses was the writer.  More importantly, Jesus wanted the people of the day, and all people everywhere to know that He had come to “fulfill [the law and the Prophets].” (Matt. 5:17) 

                Jesus knew that people were either going to view him as just a Jewish teacher, or they would see him as a heretic that was telling people to abandon the teachings and revelations from God in the OT.  But he was impressing on these people that he was neither extreme, but instead he was ushering in a new era, He is the Messiah and Deliverer, but he was not denying the validity and inspiration of the OT, particularly the Torah.

He wanted us to know that these words are important.  I think He meant that this history, the words spoken through the Law and the Torah are vital to us because they give us grounding and roots.  They connect us to our God who is the same yesterday, today and forever.  I think that’s why he said the letters and strokes won’t disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Enns’ Book

I have really enjoyed Enns’ book.  There are certainly some areas that I don’t agree. I felt like he spent way too much time on listing the similarities between the babylonian flood myths and the genesis flood account and not enough effort listing the contrasts.  However I believe his understanding of the wisdom literature is on point.  It seems common place for many evangelicals to quote from the wisdom literature and even use it as doctrine in areas that fit.  His premise that the wisdom literature are general statments, although very wise, not statements meant for every situation and for all time makes a lot of sense.  I appreciated the contradicting proverbs he listed to substantiate his premise. His emphasis on understanding the bible as it relates to culture I believe frightens the evangelicals.  I assume that many threw the book to the flames when he cited Jesus as quoting old testament scripture out of context.  Overall the book has refreshed my mind on issues I haven’t thought about for some time and challenged me to understand the culture as it pertains to the audience.